That Bad Eartha!

On Christmas day when I reached over to hit “snooze” on the Blackberry, I squinted at my messages. Everything was OK with work, then I checked my Gmail. Harold Pinter had died while I was sleeping. While I’m familiar with and admire Pinter, if I were even to attempt to try to write anything lamenting the passing of the Nobel prize-winning writer, poet, actor and humanist, I’d come across like a fake and a turd. More than usual. And sadly that might not really be as entertaining as it sounds.

The next alert I received a couple of hours later hit closer to home. Eartha Kitt, “the most exciting woman in the world” according to Orson Welles, had just died at age 81. The singer, actress, dancer, and activist who gave the world “Santa Baby”, was blacklisted  by LBJ for speaking out against Vietnam, had a CIA dossier, sang in half a dozen languages, played Catwoman and was an icon to gay men in every galaxy, including the undiscovered ones, checked out on Christmas Day. Ugh. Really?

My mom was a fan because Eartha sang one of her favorite songs in Spanish, “Angelitos Negros”, about the lack of black angels in paintings and churches (but not Heaven). My mom sang it to me as a lullaby, my aunt played it on the guitar. Mixed race people often have multi-hued families, and mine was no exception. Neither was Eartha’s. All three of them sang it from a deep place in their souls. (Cat Power did as well.)

Later, in keeping with the homosexual agenda, I “got” Eartha on a whole new level. I learned more about innuendo from one Eartha Kitt album than a million drag shows. Suddenly, the word “Fierce” had real meaning. Exotic, purring, globe-trotting, award-winning, show-stopping gold-digger – and she made Lady Bird Johnson cry? Talk about Kitten with a Whip!  For two years, fresh out of High School, I lived with my first lover and his best friend. We drank way too much wine and had too many sing alongs – including “Uska Dara”, though we had no idea what we were singing, and of course the Italo-disco classic “Where is My Man“. The phrase “cette petite sensation” from “C’est Si Bon” still tickles when I hear it.

Recently, while living in New York, I kept threatening to drag my best friend to Cafe Carlyle for her cabaret show. Sadly, we never made it. I like to pretend I don’t believe in regret, but if I weren’t me, I’d take away my own gay card. Fortunately, Eartha belonged to the world, so no card is required. All you need to appreciate Eartha Kitt, appropriately enough, is a taste for the better things in life.

The dark side of the rainbow

I’ve spent the last couple of days in a funk.

First, Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation hit me like a kick to the stomach. Intellectually, I appreciate and applaud the “team of rivals” strategy. I’ve been through the NA 12-step program, practiced Zen with HIV positive men, NSA Buddhism with pushy actors, endured my first lover’s fascination with the Course in Miracles, my second lover’s fling with Est/the Forum, and I often list Alan Watts as one of my heroes. I’ve been accused of smiling and laughing too much. I know better than to be upset.

Emotionally, intuitively, however, I feel like a fox has been let loose in the hen house. Like a deranged chicken, my reaction is not an enlightened one; it’s a passionate one. It’s a reaction rooted deep in the darkness of my brain, the part attuned by years of dealing with bigotry and prejudice as a gay, dark-skinned Latino in USA, Inc. It’s rooted in the blood and flesh I inherited from my lesbian mother who lived with her partner for 30 years but still can’t marry her. It’s my reaction, and it is valid, legitimate, cathartic and a vital part of my conversation and how I experience the world and arrive at insight. Do not dismiss me because I haven’t earned my wings or halo yet. I’m trying; but please, in the meantime, do not ask me to “calm down”, repress my gut-feelings, or take a shortcut. Engaging one’s rivals can and should be visceral, messy, heated. In that fiery discourse, ideas break down and are reconstituted.  As long as there are bigots out there, we will need that fire for protection, warmth and light. Otherwise, I could go up to the next straight stranger I see and kiss them on lips without fear. But, I know better. I know there are people out there who look upon me like a punching bag. My brother, the former gang member, and his friends were people like that.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s upset me. As I was kicking myself for being so radical, so reactionary, so “un-progressive”, cynical, paranoid, so “intolerant”, I came across an article about a lesbian that was repeatedly, brutally gang raped and left robbed and naked outside an apartment building. In San Francisco. Because she had a rainbow sticker on her car.

I’m not a flag-waver, and I know an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But if this is what we have to look to forward to, is the view really worth seeing? And if it’s not, is it not our duty to say and do something until a better world comes into focus? Are we to achieve this by biting our tongues as our brothers and sisters are beaten senseless for simply being themselves? I could prize civilized discourse above a human life, but that’s not me. Sometimes, I need a heated argument to let my rage burn off. That’s just how Jesus made me. And Jesus don’t make no mess.

So, I will not boycott, censor, avoid or ignore the inauguration or invocation. I’m not even arguing that Warren shouldn’t deliver the invocation. I’m saying that it is in poor taste, a cheap appeal to the hard right. It’s politics, I get that. Rights and privileges are negotiated, bartered and compromised every day. When push came to shove, Clinton backed “Dont’ ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. When pressed on Prop 8, Obama could have said “Marriage should be between two people who love each other”. But tellingly, he didn’t. Did he not have faith in his base?  I would like to believe that including an avowed exclusionist in a highly didactic moment implies a surplus of faith. But how productive will this super-charged gesture be? Is the hard right going to convert by invocation’s end? Will they be inspired to comfort the queers with bus tire tracks across their faces? Or, will it embolden them to continue committing more brazen hate crimes as statistics indicate?

I do not know. But I will be watching. And listening. And venting. And if that upsets you, let’s talk about it.

Thank You for the Music, 2008

Adele
Santogold
Faunts
Starfucker
Daedelus
Flying Lotus
Between the Pine
Fujiya & Miyagi
Dragonette
Black Ghosts
Michna
El Perro Del Mar
Lykke Li
Morgan Geist
Kelley Polar
Jaime Lidell
Annie
Kanye West
Gui Boratto
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Grace Jones
Pivot
Padded Cell
Girl Talk
Quiet Village
Prosumer & Murat
Ellen Alien
Modeselektor
Carl Cox
Portishead
Meat Beat Manifesto
Bomb the Bass
Radiohead
Underworld
Hip Hop Karaoke
Muxtape
Blip.fm
Pandora
Last.fm